England fans were last night warned they risk being held up at knife-point or raped on the streets of Brazil during the World Cup.

The stark admissions from Brazil's Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo came as Three Lions supporters are waiting for tomorrow's Finals draw before confirming their travel plans.

But with up to 5,000 England supporters expected to follow Roy Hodgson's team to Brazil, the staggering assessment of the true state of the country by a member of the government may make some think again.

Rebelo said: "As a country we want to be scrutinised and are sure that this will show more positives than negatives.

"But if we are comfortable with tragedies, with what happened in Sao Paulo (last week's stadium collapse) or the violence that is part of our daily lives, we are not comfortable with that.

"The issue of violence, we know it exists. We do not have the same safety conditions on the streets as in European cities."

Rebelo added: "We do have cases of violence in our cities, violence with social origins, common crime, robberies.

"This is something we are trying to fight against. We want to protect our population. Violence is harmful to our own people.

"Nobody will feel comfortable with this violence, with the "arrastao", the massed robberies, the rapes that happen.

"But this is a horrible fact. We are trying to contain this violence. We know our country may be harmed when this violence is seen by the world, as would any country where violence exists."

The term "arrastao" refers to gangs of marauding teenagers, carrying knives or occasionally guns, who suddenly emerge and swarm around their victims.

Incidents had been on the decrease over the past few years but there has been a sudden re-emergence of the problem, especially in Rio.

Brazil is also braced for a repeat of last summer's street protests and violence (above) over the astronomical cost of the World Cup in a country with huge disparities between rich and poor with plans to deploy extra police - an additional 55,000 armed officers were used during this summer's Confederations Cup - in a bid to clamp down on violence.

Andre Rodrigues, the government's special adviser for major events at the Ministry of Justice, promised special "World Cup Courts" would be established to administer instant punishments.

The government fears further mass protests developing into violence and Rodrigues added: "We have boosted the gathering process to prevent demonstrations during large scale events, to gather relevant information to put in place whatever measures are required to prevent violent demonstrations.

"People are free to democratically voice their views and demonstrate. We try to deter any violent demonstrations or violent actions."

Rebelo, meanwhile, attempted to make light of the construction problems which mean the stadia in Curitiba, Cuiaba and Sao Paulo will miss FIFA's end of year handover deadline by at least two months.

He added: "There have been one or two delays but they are not significant. What matters is that the stadia will be delivered in January, which is the most probable hypothesis.

"I have been to many weddings in my life and at 100 per cent of those weddings, the bride arrived late. I've never seen a bride arrive on time but never seen the wedding not take place because of that."